


The Other Trespasser

by KaerWrites



Series: Redcliffe Amulet [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Multiple/Alternate Realities
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25383235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaerWrites/pseuds/KaerWrites
Summary: It might have taken a trip to another universe, but Dorian Pavus has found all of the things he's always been looking for. He's in love, making real, lasting changes in Tevinter, and building the kind of life he can be proud of. But the Inquisition he worked so hard to fix is in trouble again, and there are forces at work beyond his - or anyone's - imagination.
Relationships: Implied Past Solavellan, Male Inquisitor/Dorian Pavus, Male Lavellan/Dorian Pavus
Series: Redcliffe Amulet [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/283275
Comments: 26
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please take note that this is part of a series and will be a very strange place to start if you have not read previous works. Please also note that this is yet a work in progress, and I at this time have no idea how that progress will actually go. Please be patient with updates as I try to figure out what I'm doing with this.
> 
> There is a lot of exposition in this chapter. Feel free to skip the summary if you want to.

Sunrise over Minrathous surely topped the list of grand sights Ryn of clan Lavellan had never expected personally to see, but the gods, it would seem, possessed quite the sense of humor.

Dawn approached the ancient city slowly, bright golden tendrils stretching exploratory fingers over cobbled streets better given over to shadows and secrets than the optimism innate in the birth of a clean new day. The light lit up the mismatch of ruins and newer builds, of temples and towers, mansions and mausoleums. It stretched over the toothy grins of marble dragons, caught yawning in the fragility of fresh morning, and for a moment – a breath – it was beautiful. The sins of the city generally took longer to wake up.

Standing on the bedroom balcony, Ryn wondered that such a sight, such a morning, could become so familiar to him. Once, he had slept under the stars, rose with the sun to string his bow and stalk a hunting path known only to the animals of the forest. Now a robe of fine silk hung lightly around his nude body, and the smells of sea and creeping northern heat mingled with the aroma of the strong Antivan coffee he held in his hands and it struck him, again, the unimaginable turns his life had taken.

He sighed as a pair of arms slipped ‘round him from behind, and let himself lean back into the strength of another’s chest. A mustache tickled at his skin as his lover nuzzled his neck. Dorian Pavus breathed in deeply, as if to fill his senses with the scent of Ryn’s skin, as if to memorize the moment and its every detail.

“A million years could come and pass and I would not find a single sight less thrilling,” Dorian said, and Ryn smiled.

“It’s a beautiful city, when it wants to be.”

“I’m not talking about the city.”

“Flattery, is it?” Ryn teased. “You know it will get you everywhere.”

Dorian laughed.

Dorian claimed that he had always thrived on making a pariah of himself. He had certainly caused a stir when he had returned to Minrathous with his male, Dalish lover in tow. It still wasn’t clear which of those details the city deemed more damning. Ryn personally thought it had something to do with the weather, the alignment of the stars, and whatever hats were currently in season.

Dorian’s mother had been positively livid, anyway, much to Dorian’s surprise. The woman who had spent his childhood pleasantly buzzed and fuzzily unaware of trifling nuances such as her son’s age or personality or experiences had stormed up to meet them, red in the face, and demanded that Dorian stop disgracing the family name and drop his unnatural fetish.

“What you do behind closed doors is your own business!” she’d said, barely slurring her words at all. “It’s when you dress it up like a civilized man that it becomes a disgrace. The Dalish act isn’t even _clever_.” That sounded like the deepest sin of them all. Lack of cleverness.

Dorian had laughed in her face. “If you knew,” he’d said. “If you knew even a _fraction_ of what I’ve gone through to have this man in my life - !”

“Oh darling,” she’d said. “I’m sure the brothel will give you at least some of your money back!”

Things had only escalated from there. Insults flew, claws came out, and when Dorian’s mother had at last turned to his father, desperate, demanding that he put a stop to this, that Dorian be disowned once and for all…

Halward refused.

“Are you going to be all right today, Dorian?” Ryn asked softly, as his lover’s laughter died to a gentle chuckle, and he felt his arms tighten around him in response. “Is there anything in particular you need from me?”

“Only your company, _Amatus_.”

“You know that’s the one thing guaranteed to make this day harder.”

“You must learn to appreciate the distraction of a good scandal.”

Dorian’s voice was warm and amused, daring, with just the perfect edge of exciting recklessness. Had he understood the mage just a little less clearly, Ryn might have even believed it. There was nothing sexual in the way Dorian was holding him; the mage clung to Ryn in much the same way a child might a comfort object.

Dorian hadn’t made his return to Tevinter lightly. Despite mutual steps toward, and yearning for, reconciliation, Dorian’s relationship with his father failed time and again to reach a point of comfort or restored trust. Dorian was simply too bold, too revolutionary, too passionate in his pursuits. It wasn’t simply that he came home toting a male Dalish lover, speaking out against slavery, and encouraging others to take action against the corruption and excess that ravaged his country.

It was the fact he was good at it.

Inch by inch, piece by painful piece, Dorian’s circle of influence was expanding. He was _succeeding_. The young reformers who had been persuaded years ago to lend themselves to act against the Venatori, joining Ryn’s upstart branch of the Inquisition, were making their voices heard in Tevinter now. Politicians were beginning to take notice. Public opinion was, slowly, shifting.

Dorian’s success frightened his father far more than his failures ever could have. Their arguments became explosive. Dorian’s reputation and the Pavus legacy no longer concerned Halward half so much as the idea that an assassin’s blade might someday find his son’s throat. Love motivated even their most caustic fallouts.

Ryn knew the pain of it had been truly brutal, then, the day that irony struck with lethal precision. The assassins that Halward feared made their appearance at last – but it was not Dorian whose neck they found.

It didn’t matter whether or not Dorian’s actions were the cause of the hit, because Dorian _believed_ they were.

And so did his mother.

As much as Ryn had never expected to set foot in the Imperium, center of Thedas’s slave trade and boiling cauldron of corruption and blood magic, he had expected even less to one day attend the funeral of a magister – but that was exactly what he would be doing today, against all better judgement.

Dorian wanted him there.

Ryn sipped his coffee, and he slid his arm along Dorian’s forearm, and allowed himself to be held.

\--

Years ago, rising tensions between the templars and the mages in the south had erupted into a full scale rebellion – an all-out war so vicious and so violent and volatile that clan Lavellan decided it would be in their best interest to send a spy to the peace talks, so that they would have time to prepare and protect themselves if things went wrong. This was not the rare or unusual event future historians would claim it to be; Dalish clans that wanted to survive often sent scouts into the world to report back on important matters, but Lavellan had not seen the need to in generations. Even when Blight threatened, they had deemed themselves far enough away from the conflict to hunker down and wait it out. The entire clan debated over the choice of spy for _weeks_.

Ryn himself had been one of the candidates put forward, but as much as the idea of leaving his clan to experience the world had excited and intrigued him, he’d ultimately decided to withdraw from consideration. The clan’s First, Rellana, was sheltered and spoiled and, he thought, could benefit from the experience more than he.

Stepping back was a mistake Ryn would come to regret. When Rellana became the only survivor of an explosion that shattered the conclave and ripped a hole in the sky, superstitious shemlen named her the _Herald of Andraste_ , and began to follow her as one chosen by their Maker himself. They formed an Inquisition, and set Rellana as its lead.

Predictably, the power went directly to her head.

Events snowballed. One day, human soldiers arrived outside Lavellan’s camp, and without warning began to slaughter every elf they could get their hands on. Cruel and stupid, they _delighted_ in the pain they caused, in the sanction from the _Maker’s Chosen_ to cause it. They did things Ryn still did not like to remember, even as he continued to wear the scars from it to this day.

Lavellan was crippled by their losses. Most of the clan was killed that day, and many more died of injuries later. The aravels were almost all burned, the halla slaughtered or driven off. Even their Keeper bore wounds that would later claim her life. They seemed doomed. What remained of the clan limped deeper into the forest. They had little means by which to recover, and no hope of defending themselves should the humans of Wycome discover their whereabouts. Though they managed to limp through the rest of the winter, hope of recovery was difficult. There were days where Ryn was sure he would watch his clan fall and fail, picked off one by one by hunger and disease and human arrows.

Then something strange happened.

Ryn hadn’t been among the group of hunters who came across the odd sight, but he heard about it later. Two humans and a dwarf had infiltrated the old camp and, once there, had solemnly and respectfully began to gather up the remains of the dead for burning – something Lavellan’s few survivors had not dared to do, for fear of drawing attention from Wycome. The hunters had rounded the strange trio up and forced them back to camp to demand they aid with the clan’s recovery. One of th humans was a mage, an asset they could not pass up.

Knowing him as he now did, it was almost funny that Ryn’s first glance of Dorian had been of a dirty, disheveled wreck of a man with bloodshot eyes and the stench of too many nights spent drinking. His hair had been grown out, shaggy, his clothing simple and stained. He’d had a very poorly kept beard – and the saddest eyes Ryn had ever seen.

Then his gaze had passed over Ryn, and –

Ryn still couldn’t have said what it was he had seen on the human’s face that day, only that it had been sudden and hungry and intense, broken, hopeful – and fascinating. He had felt drawn to that gaze, and the man it belonged to, long before he heard the story of the events that had brought Dorian into his life – long before he’d been capable of even guessing what they would come to mean to each other.

A mishap with experimental magic had sent Dorian to another reality, to a place where Ryn, not Rellana, had been the one to attend the Conclave. A reality in which it was Ryn who bore the title of Inquisitor, in which the Inquisition helped people, and fought to restore peace, instead of just brutally grabbing up power. A reality in which Dorian and Ryn had met, and had fallen, as Dorian would later admit to him, _devastatingly_ in love.

Dorian had been searching for Ryn ever since he had returned to his rightful reality. He had been putting Lavellan’s dead to rest because he had believed Ryn might be among them.

Dorian’s motivations might have been, as he would freely admit, pure and unapologetic selfishness, but it had started something. Ryn found himself on a crash course with destiny, in a pivotal position to help reverse the harm that Rellana’s Inquisition had caused, and to put to rights the things that had been broken.

Wrestling control of the Inquisition from Rellana had been a monumental challenge.

But falling in love with Dorian Pavus had been easy.

The man was brilliant, funny, kind, and brave. He was the single most interesting and exciting person Ryn had ever met. Moreover, he made Ryn better – had a way of pulling Ryn back from harmful behavior, of helping him to remember the value of his own life as more than just a sacrifice to be given away in the service of others. He helped Ryn to keep his feet on the ground, even as he believed in him wholeheartedly.

Sometimes, though, Ryn did find that he missed that raggedy beard.

\--

Dorian lifted his head when a servant knocked on the door to announce that the bath was ready. The stylish townhome that they rented was served only by paid help – an insistence that Dorian had made even before Ryn could request it. Dorian’s mother had tried to send him a pair of slaves, once, when they had first arrived in Minrathous and things were not quite so strained with her. Dorian had promptly freed them, hired them, and helped them find lodging. His mother had not been amused.

It started a trend in Dorian’s social circle, filtering down to the younger elite, the idea that it was gauche and cheap and unseemly to own slaves. Antislavery reform was one of the pillars of Dorian’s reformation movement.

“Will you join me, _Amatus_?” Dorian asked as he drew away from their embrace. His grey eyes still held the wound of his father’s loss, even as he eyed Ryn in the most lascivious of ways.

Ryn wouldn’t push him to talk before he was ready. He returned his smile.

“We’ll be late if you allow yourself to get distracted,” he pointed out.

“Late to my own father’s funeral?” Dorian mused. “I always did like to make an entrance.”

\--

“Late to your own father’s funeral? Scandalous,” Mae sniffed in a way that was not-quite disapproving as Dorian slid into the Chantry pew beside her. She seemed amused.

Dorian knew it didn’t matter. He knew there was no chance his arrival _wouldn’t_ have caused a stir, whether he was on time or not. Not when he arrived with Ryn on his arm.

The somber mourning silkds that Ryn had traded his hunting leathers for draped beautifully over his athletic little body, drawing envious attention from the moment he walked through the Chantry doors. He was a stunning beauty of a man, with eyes so blue they were almost purple, and a smile that could stop a heart, and –

But in Tevinter, elven beauty was only worthy of admiration or praise when it came enshrined safely in chains. Ryn carried himself with too much simple assurance, his shoulder’s square, his chin proud. There was authority in his manner. Even the odd free elf in Tevinter would not dare present himself in such a way – like a force to be reckoned with, like a leader. There was no arrogance to it, it was simply matter-of-fact.

It made proper Tevinters uncomfortable, this brave, blatant reminder that their docile domestic slaves had come from something more, that there might yet be pride and fight left in them – that they might one day remember that they had once ruled the world. Ryn’s very existence was a threat.

Ryn knew it. He had to know it, because he played it up. The wild Dalish who had shaken the south, he often went barefoot, and chose Dalish cuts for his clothing (Dorian, fortunately, employed a _spectacular_ taylor.) Ryn had taken to shaving a little at either side of his head, so that his hair formed a spectacular crest, braided today, down the middle of his skull that fell to the small of his back. His rebellion took a different form than Dorian’s, but it was no less obvious. Their match was undeniable as it was thrilling – and dangerous. Dorian had no doubts that most of their room saw their presence as a threat and an insult, if not an outright attack.

Being tardy, failing to sit in the Pavus family pew with his mother, arriving with Ryn on his arm – Dorian was earning all kinds of black marks against himself today, and he loved it. He liked to think that Halward had warmed to Ryn before he died; the elf’s charm was inevitable, after all. Perhaps his father would have been at least a little amused, if exasperated, by the wave of whispers and displeasure that rolled through his funeral before it had even began.

\--

“My dear son has always possessed such a flare for the dramatic,” Aquinea Pavus said, her tone droll and haughty and bored. She made no attempt to moderate her volume, though surely she was aware that said son could hear her. Perhaps, Ryn conceded, that was the point. “He’s still just a child, throwing a tantrum. Frightfully unbecoming at his age. No, no, don’t look. He lives off the attention.”

Whatever expression Ryn wore on his face, it made Dorian chuckle. He caught both of Ryn’s hands in his own, and maneuvered so that he blocked Ryn’s view of the woman. “Don’t start troubling yourself over her, now,” he said. “Just because my father is gone does not mean you have leave to start a new project. I think today marks the occasion of the most my mother has ever spoken about me. I’m impressed that she remembers my name. There was a period of about two years where she thought my name was Dolan.”

“Perhaps my being here is a touch too disrespectful.”

“Perish the thought!” Dorian said. He lifted Ryn’s hands to brush his lips across his knuckles. Years of regret lingered in his eyes. “You’re the only thing making today the least bit bearable. I won’t have you doubt that.” He meant it, so Ryn tried his best not to feel like hie presence here was causing more trouble than it was worth.

Following the Chantry services honoring Halward Pavus, his ashes had been taken back to the Pavus home for internment in the family crypt. This involved first displaying their urn in a reception that Dorian could not be barred from attending, not without garnering worse gossip than his showing up with a male elven lover would earn. At least, that was how Dorian had explained it – and why Ryn now found himself standing in a formal Pavus sitting room sampling hors d’oeuvres and champagne while the lady of the house draped herself dramatically near her late husband’s remains and proceeded to figuratively shit all over her only son.

It wasn’t the most bizarre moment or Ryn’s life, but it did make the top ten.

“All right, Dorian,” Ryn conceded. “But surely it doesn’t serve anything for us to stand here and subject ourselves to her garbage.”

Dorian had been keeping his voice low, but Ryn didn’t bother to. He met Aquinea’s eyes fully when she looked his way, and continued to meet it until her haughty expression began to falter.

Dorian observed this exchange with what could only be described as gless, and waited to speak until the contest of wills was over. Aquinea had been the first to look away.

“A walk, then,” Dorian allowed at last. “My, but I had no idea you were so sensitive.”

Ryn took his arm and drew him away from his mother, from the urn that held his father’s ashes, from the gaggle of nobility only too pleased to overhear the drama.

It concerned him, the fact that Dorian had placed himself where he would be subject to his mother’s scrutiny and criticism. Ryn knew that only Dorian could control how he dealt with the grief he had yet to acknowledge – but he also knew how the man tried, with everything he did. How he yearned for recognition, for approval, and, most of all, for love.

Whatever comfort Ryn’s presence provided him, it also opened Dorian up to further scrutiny, further censor.

“Oh, _Amatus_ ,” Dorian chuckled. “You are marvelous, aren’t you?”

He didn’t feel marvelous.

“Did you expect your mother to behave like this?” he asked.

“Do you suppose she should be lying on the ground, violently weeping? I’ve told you – my parents hated each other. Anyway, her face no longer has the ability to show that much emotion. Too many anti-aging poultices.”

“Don’t you think someone should weep for him?”

“Oh, _Amatus_ ,” Dorian said, and he sounded more serious, less flippant, then. “He did like you, I think.”

“I don’t care about that, I just want…” Ryn wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence, only that the day’s events had disturbed him deeply. He knew what it was that Halward had tried to do to Dorian. He knew that, even had he lived another thirty years those wounds were likely never to fully close, that Dorian would always remember that his father had been willing to sacrifice the things that made Dorian _Dorian_ if it meant securing his legacy. But he also knew that people were complicated, and that love and hate were very closely tied, and that people could change. Mistakes could never be taken back, but sometimes they could be overcome, so long as there was _time_. Unfortunately, that was the one thing Halward Pavus no longer possessed.

“Death is a different thing for the Dalish,” Dorian said at last, quietly. “You care about one another. We’ve forgotten how to do that, here, I think.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“No?”

“I’ve witnessed the power of Tevinter emotions, once or twice. Didn’t you tell me how you care, deeply, about everything?”

“Everything, yes. Each other is up for debate.”

“Dorian…”

Dorian stopped, then, and it was nearly a full minute before he turned to Ryn, before he took both of his hands into both of his own, and lifted them to brush his lips across Ryn’s knuckles. They had passed into the warm quiet of one of the Pavus courtyards, the air around them spicy with the scent of orchids, filled with the sound of water in decorative fountains.

“I know what you’re trying to do, _Amatus_ ,” he began.

“But right now you just want to get through today,” Ryn finished. Dorian looked relieved.

“Yes,” he breathed.

\--

That night when they got back to the townhouse, a summons from the magisterium was waiting.

Dorian had been appointed Tevinter Ambassador to the upcoming Exalted Council in Orlais.

Halward had arranged it before his death, to get Dorian out of Tevinter for a while. Away from potential assassins, and out of the public eye.


	2. Chapter 2

She stroked the cloth reverently when they brought her the gown.

Rellana had no shortage of pretty things, even in her captivity, but _new_ things were few and far in between. _New_ required the approval of her so-called advisors, and it had been a very long time since they had been anything like generous with her. Rellana had enough silks and jewels and furs already, they insisted. Now that her public appearances had grown so rare, they said she had little need for more.

A new gown meant a new public appearance. It meant leaving her confinement. It meant a _chance_.

Rellana smiled.

\--

The Inquisitor’s tower had become a prison. Even the grounds of Skyhold were forbidden to her without an escort, carefully chosen and rarely repeated, so that she could not influence them. Rellana knew it was because she was dangerous. The shem knew the bitch had teeth, and woe betide anyone who forgot. She had almost succeeded, after all, there at the final hour.

Corypheus defeated, an ancient magister darkspawn dead by _her_ hand, Rellana had turned on her rival and almost, _almost_ \- !

Solas had been distant and strange the night before the battle, when he came to her in Skyhold’s cells. The man she loved, the man who had turned against her in service to her enemies.

“Not them,” he said, when she had accused him of such. “I act only in service to myself – and the People.”

She may have been dreaming, or somehow muddled the memory in the years since it had occurred. It seemed that Solas had come _through_ her cell bars, and though his expression had been cold and arrogant, he had cupped her face gently in his hands, and told her what to do.

She had nearly succeeded.

Rellana remembered the rush, the power and the ecstasy, when she had pulled the magic from the blood that had been spilled to refill her dwindled supply. She lit her staff, the powerful flare blazoned across the night, rallying those who still supported her. Inquisition soldier turned against Inquisition soldier. Rellana threw herself at her rival, plunged her knife in deep –

She had come so close. One last-minute, desperate attempt, final victory fragrant in her nostrils –

And that gods-cursed snake Ryn slithered away once again.

Solas was gone. That was the blow that had truly felled her – not her failure to kill the irritating upstart who destroyed Rellana’s Inquisition. Solas had promised that they would bring Arlathan back, shower the elvhen people in their former glory, and rule together side by side for the rest of eternity.

But he hadn’t even stayed to see if her coup was successful. Solas slipped away while everyone was distracted, and he left Rellana behind, and all her plans slipped away, too.

A week after the battle with Corypheus, Rellana signed a final treaty with Ryn’s Inquisition.

Six months after, Cassandra and Leliana orchestrated Rellana’s “graceful retirement” from the public eye.

Ten months after, Rellana’s hand began to hurt.

\--

For a long time, Rellana stopped caring.

Eventually, hatred reawakened.

Rellana didn’t know the Inquisition’s business anymore. It was her name on many of the documents, but what those documents contained was a mystery she was incapable of attempting to answer. Maybe Ryn gave the orders, all the way from Tevinter, shoved so far up that filthy Pavus’s ass he probably tasted mustache oil. Or maybe it was the work of her former advisors, the trio of shemlen dispensing with any illusion that they were not the true puppeteers. Maybe it was Cassandra. Calling herself Victoria now, she certainly did not hesitate to call on the Inquisition as the Divine’s own army, just as she had likely always wanted.

Rellana didn’t care. Her arm was killing her, rot and Fade crawling slowly over once-creamy flesh. A secret she hid, alone in her tower. She covered it with bandages and gloves, hid the sickly-sweet stench of rot with perfume and oils.

She hoped when it went off, it destroyed them all.

\--

They were teased endlessly when their friends and compatriots learned they had ordered two carriages for their passage along the Imperial Highway.

“Pavus has corrupted that little Dalish to such a point they need a second carriage for their luggage alone.”

“No, no – you’ve got it wrong. You know how elves are. The second carriage is so Pavus can get some sleep without the little fellow trying to bugger him at every hour of the night.”

“Doesn’t sound like such a problem to me…”

“Are you kidding? Pavus is too vain to show up without his beauty sleep.”

“The second carriage is for my books,” Ryn corrected them, with a sly little smile that had them all laughing and patting Dorian on the back for the rest of the day. They drank to their departure, and promised to send word of the movement’s progress in their absence, and when Dorian and Ryn at last set out from Minrathous, they were accompanied by hangovers, as well as excessive amounts of luggage.

The second carriage proved to be _remarkably_ fortuitous near the border, where they _just so happened_ to agree to take on two additional travelers to join them in their jaunt to Orlais. As luck would have it, many of the articles of clothing they had packed just happened to fit the two additional travelers (who, it turned out, were unamused that someone had planned for the fact neither would have anything appropriate to wear to the Exalted Council.)

“I’ve only had this flannel a year,” remarked one.

“This armor is serviceable,” agreed the other.

It was a small, out of the way teahouse in a little border town so tiny and so ancient it didn’t remember whether it belonged to Tevinter or Nevarra where the quartet _just happened to_ run into each other.

“Thank the creators for miraculous coincidences!” Ryn said brightly, to absolutely no one’s amusement.

It had taken the kind of meticulous planning and secrecy only agents of the Inquisition could arrange, and at least a hundred ravens, back and forth, to get the meeting planned. As much as Dorian loved scandal and attention, traveling to Orlais with a notoriously famous and exceedingly wanted mage killer, the mage killer’s apostate husband, and their three very large mabari, was perhaps a touch too daring, even for him. At least, that was how Ryn had reasoned it out.

Privately, Dorian thought his little Dalish lover had just wanted to play at intrigue.

In any case, at the teahouse Dorian paid for a private dining room, _accidentally_ ordered enough tea and lunch for _four_ people, rather than _two_ , and Ryn cheerfully invited the _complete strangers_ they had _just met, coincidentally, on accident_ to join them.

“Don’t try to hug me,” Fenris warned.

“Would not dream of it,” Dorian answered.

“Have you had word about Rellana?” Hawke asked. “I assume she will have to be involved in these…proceedings. How are they planning to account for her?”

“Unless we want to expose the true state of things – which we don’t – yes, she will be present,” Ryn said. He knew better than to look at Dorian when he said it. That had been one of their most explosive arguments in years.

“The bitch still has teeth,” Fenris said, hackles rising.

“We won’t underestimate her,” Ryn promised.

Dorian shook his head. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I lobbied for sending an assassin ages ago. Still haven’t gotten my money back, at that.”

“She’s family,” Ryn said, which was always what he came back to, in the end. Dorian lifted his tea, and did not bother to argue. The others also seemed to recognize the futility. Silence filled the room for several moments.

“We got your wedding present,” Hawke said at last. “I want you to know that money went to good use.”

“I’d like to say I’m sorry we couldn’t host the ceremony,” Ryn said, “But the fact you’re both so notorious means you’re doing something right.”

Fenris shifted, a little, uncomfortable with the attention.

“We’re trying, anyway,” Hawke said for him.

“The only good slaver is a dead one,” Fenris said. His eyes fixed on Dorian. “Speaking of death…”

“Oh no,” Dorian sighed. “This is going to be a very long journey if you’re going to threaten me before we’ve even entered Nevarra.”

“I wanted to give my condolences for your father.”

“You – what?”

He straightened a little, frowning. “I won’t pretend to be mournful of a magister’s death,” he said. “But I am sorry for your loss, nonetheless.”

“Does this imply you _care_ about me?” Dorian looked at Ryn and Hawke, to make sure they, too, were hearing this conversation, that he wasn’t hallucinating it.

Fenris scowled at him. “Of course not,” he said. “I’m being polite.”

“He gets like this,” Hawke advised. “Just say thank you and move on. He still says he doesn’t like me, either.”

“I don’t,” Fenris said. He reached for his tea.

\--

“But what safeguards do you have in place?” Hawke pressed, later, after they had eaten.

“The Exalted Council has been called to determine the fate of the Inquisition in a manner that both Orlais and Fereldan find acceptable,” Ryn said. “Rellana and I will barely even be in the same room, and only then during proceedings. We’ll be there to sit quietly and look pretty while the big bad nations argue, and that’s it. It’s – performative. I wouldn’t be attending at all, if Dorian’s presence wasn’t required.”

It was a reasonable answer – calm and unconcerned and even amused, in that way Ryn had, where it seemed as if he was smiling at a private joke. But as he talked, he absently stroked the fingers Rellana’s men had once broken, and he held himself just a little too carefully, and Dorian knew.

He waited until they left – until they were alone in their carriage, and Fenris and Hawke were alone in theirs, before he challenged him on it.

“You’re afraid to see Rellana again.” Dorian had been too busy arguing with Ryn about Rellana being there at all to notice, but it was true. He was sure about it.

Best to be upfront about it. If Dorian was roundabout in his questioning, Ryn would only duck and evade and play with him. Dorian said it without hesitation or embellishment, and held eye contact when Ryn, guiltily, looked up.

“Pardon me?” Ryn asked.

“ _Amatus_ , why didn’t you say anything?” Dorian asked.

Ryn shifted, and gave him a smile, and Dorian could see the infuriating gears in his mind turning, working to find an answer he was willing to give.

He was actually surprised when Ryn looked away, turning his gaze out the window, his smile more closely resembling a grimace. “Well, there wasn’t anything to say, was there?” Ryn asked. “It’s necessary for the Inquisition to present a united front. How I feel or don’t feel doesn’t take into accounting.”

“You said yourself – you don’t need to attend the council. You’re only going because of me. We aren’t attached at the hip, _amatus_. You could have chosen to stay home.”

“Tevinter isn’t home, Dorian.”

“Do you expect me to believe Skyhold is?”

“ _You_ are,” Ryn said. The silence passed a beat too long. Ryn seemed surprised by Dorian’s surprise when he finally looked at him again. “My clan is scattered to the winds, Dorian,” he said. “Those that are still alive in the first place. And my advisors run the Inquisition – which may very well be disbanded, after this nonsense. What else do I have, aside from you? I’m not going to let you go alone. What if I’m wrong? What if she _isn’t_ neutralized? What if she does manage to do something? You are the first person she would want to hurt, if she couldn’t get to me.”

“You - ?”

“It’s not a sacrifice,” Ryn said, before Dorian could accuse him of such. “It would be worse for me to stay behind and worry, that’s all. At least if we’re together, I can handle it. I won’t be sitting in Tevinter living off your family’s money and waiting for a raven to hear what’s she’s done.”

“She tortured you,” Dorian began.

“She doesn’t have any power anymore,” Ryn said, “It’s – irrational for me to feel this way. I’m aware of it, and I can deal with it. And she won’t be allowed to go off on her own. I won’t be alone with her, or even in the same room without at least a dozen allies. There won’t be trouble. I _know_ there won’t be trouble.”

“ _Amatus…_ ”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well. I don’t like that.”

Ryn laughed. A helpless, wild, desperate sound.

Dorian moved from his seat to the one beside the elf, and he took Ryn into his arms, and they did not discuss the matter again.


End file.
